Here's something to read.

Sorry, but I am a Muslim. I'm not allowed any Spam.

I was skeptical, but it worked for me too. After the low introductory price, you too can sell crack right out of your home. That's right! You may say to yourself, "But I'm not a good salesman, how would I sell crack." Well that's the beauty of the crack sales system. If you can get the first sale, the crack basically sells itself. It's what the professional salesmen call an "addiction!" With this "addiction" you will have customers for life, and the only question you have to ever remember is, "Do you work for any law enforcement agancies?"
Ahh, yes, once I was poor, but thanks to the Crack sales system, I am really, really rich. I even get more dates now, like my prison cell mate, Bubba McLargeHuge! What an offer!

"Eh, hey Beavis, some dillspank is, like, posting cr@p and stuff"
"Yeah, what a buttmunch. We should like, kick his @ss or something. Then we can get some nachos! Nachos. NNNnachos! Yeah"
"Settle down, Beavis! Don't make me smack you. We have to go, ehhh, find the 'modsterater' or something and tell him to delete this cr@p!"
"Oooh, yeah, I see what you're saying. Where the he!! is that guy anyway?"
"I think he's scoring, Beavis."
"Yeah, he's smooooth-ah"
"Yeah, you'll never score, Beavis"
"Shut up sunofabitch, I've had it, had it! For days the moderator has been off scoring! This sucks! I never get to score. I have to sit here and listen to this guy's cr@p all day! It sucks, sucks!!! Can I delete this cr@p? No! Ahhh!!!"
"Ehhh, Beavis?!? I thought we were gonna get, like, some nachos."
"Ohhh, yeah. I see what you're saying."
"Then we can go and like, hang out in Tod's gang and stuff."
"Tod's cool. He's gonna kick this guy's @ss. That'll rule, RULE!!!"
"Yeah, we're like, out of here dudes!"

Oh no... he's back.

Two new links: 1 and 2

And maybe you could run this through the Babelfish. Have fun.

Everybody likes to visit Gallery of CSS Descramblers. Nice legal fun.

Nice legal fun.

Yeah, but for how much longer?

The Second Circuit has rejected the appeal in the 2600 case.

http://www.politechbot.com/p-02854.html
http://www.politechbot.com/p-02857.html

Also, Professor Felten's case against the DMCA was dismissed. He and the EFF are almost certain to appeal.

http://www.politechbot.com/p-02852.html

Well, we keep on getting hit with the starving executives artists spiel.

From the Grammy Awards.

http://www.politechbot.com/p-03202.html

The Senate held hearings on the SSSCA yesterday. Proponents of not bending over and doing whatever the h*ll Hollywood wants got beaten up.

Call your Representative and both Senators.

MHO: Looks like the tech industry will be dead in 5 years.

My proposed changes to Copyright law.

1. All copyrights must be held by private citizens. Corporations are not allowed to hold copyrights.

2. Any copyrighted material reverts to the public domain after 20 years, or upon the death of the creator, whichever comes first.

3. Congress shall pass no law preventing Fair Use.

Author's note. The Constitution specifically calls for a limited time to copyright. However, we essentially have perpetual copyright. Current copyright law is (I believe) life + 50 for privately held copyrights, or 95 years for corporate copyrights.

However, whenever the copyright on Mickey Mouse is about to expire, an amazing thing happens... corporate copyrights get extended!. Nothing created after about 1930 has passed into the public domain, nor is it ever likely to do so.

Reproduced with Permission. Copyright © 2002, Peter Trei.


Statement of Yakval Enti, spokesman of the MPAA(Mnemonists, Praise-singers, and Anthemists Association) to His Highness Hammurabi, King of Sumeria:

Your Majesty: I wish to call you attention to a severe threat to the security of your kingdom, and the livelihoods of thousands of your subjects.

After Shamash sets and the people kick back after a long day of growing millet, they desire entertainment. Their favorite forms are stories, tales, and sagas, told by the members of the MPAA. Talented boys spend up to 12 years learning the tales by heart at the feet of the masters. Any evening MPAA members can be found in the taverns singing the old tales, praising the praiseworthy, and creating new tales from the old.

This system has worked well since the beginning of time - there were storytellers at your coronation, there were storytellers at your father's coronation, and there were storytellers in the caves of our ancestors.

This natural arrangement is now threatened from an unexpected direction - the scribes and accountants. The geeks' system of recording numbers and quantities has been perverted to freeze speech onto clay.

Understand the threat to our business model. At the moment, if someone wants to hear 'The Tale of the Ox, the Ass and the Sumerian', they find an MPAA member, pay him, and sit back to listen to the whole four hour saga. While anyone could recall and tell others the general outline, only MPAA members know every detail and can give the listener the whole story. If you want to hear it again, you pay again. Thousands of MPAA members rely on this fact for their livelihoods.

With the recent invention of "writing" the system is in danger of collapse. We've found that some scribes are actually "recording" entire sagas onto clay. Any scribe can "read" these out to people for free or for money, complete and word-for-word, without being a member of or paying the MPAA! A scribe who has obtained a set of tablets of an story can even read it an unlimited number of times, or (worst of all) make copies. This is starting to have an economic impact on our membership. Consider Rimat-Ninsun, whose masterwork "The Epic of Gilgamesh" took him three years to create, and who looked to it to put bread on his table into his old age, as he told it for money, or let others tell it under paid license after learning it from him. 'Gilgamesh' is now circulating on 12 clay tablets, and Rimat is starving. Who will bother to create new tales if they are just going to be written down?

"Writing" presents insidious dangers to your kingdom as well. It can be anonymous. Before writing, any message arrived with a person to speak it, who could be held accountable for their speech. With writing, it is impossible to tell what scribe "wrote" a message. Anonymous threats, kidnap notes, and untraceable sedition are now possible. Clearly "writing" carries with it far greater problems for our civilization than it does advantages.

However, scribes, accountants, and their skills are essential to business, contracts, laws, and the collection of taxes. We just need to make sure that they are controlled properly.

I therefore propose the Scribal Stylus Safety Control Act. (SSSCA). This requires every scribe to have an MPAA approved, "literate" slave with him at all times, peering over his shoulder. If a scribe is seen to be "writing' something other then accounting information, for example a story (stories are the province of MPAA bards), or a message (which should have been given to a paid mnenomist for delivery), or anything seditious, then the slave will take away the scribe's stylus and call the authorities. I ask you to have this Act "written" into your Code of Law.

Is this difficult? Yes. Is it expensive? Yes. However, it is clear that without strict controls, widespread "writing" will not only destroy the entertainment industry, it will threaten civilisation itself!

I read at Telepolis (Use Babelfish or Teletranslator to translate it) that a new movement against DMCA and SSCA has been formed: DigitalConsumer.org.

Silver Lining on the Digital Horizon

The SSSCA has been introduced. Of course, to make it more palatable, instead of the SSSCA, it's been renamed as the "Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act" (CBDTPA).

Now that it's renamed, it makes it easier to demonize opponents: "How could anyone be against promoting Consumer Broadband or Digital Television? D@mned hippies!"

If you live in the US, write your congressman and your senators. Today.

In the near future every TV, every computer, every CD player built for the US is required to have "copy protection" under the CBDTPA/SSSCA.

Some links:
Telepolis (translation required)
The CBDTPA
Hollings' Statement

Say good-bye to the free speech, America.

In addition to writing your congressperson about this abomination, I came up with a secondary attack.

Remember, for this to become law, Bush needs to sign it.

Write him a letter asking him to lobby against the bill, and to veto it should it pass. Use his own biases in your favor. Point out that this

• is an unwarranted intrusion of government on business
• is designed to help the "Liberal Hollywood Elite"
• will stifle "innovation" in the tech industry.

I wasn't really paying attention. Did Valenti make an "evils of piracy" speech like that guy did at the Grammys?

I think movie privacy is evil just cause the picture quality blows, but I agree with Scott on the music end of it.

Reposted with permission. Also online at Politechbot.

Hollings, Valenti, and the American Techniban
Richard Forno
25 March 2002
rforno@infowarrior.org

(c) 2002 by Author. Permission is granted to quote, reprint or redistribute
provided the text is not altered, and appropriate credit is given.

Summary: Discussion of the latest (and controversial) piece of
entertainment-industry legislation designed to screw the law-abiding
citizens of the Net.

The United States is engaged in a war against oppressive regimes run by
ignorant fanatics barely able to comprehend the intricacies of modern
society. Through actions favoring the ruling class, secret midnight deals,
and restricting public distribution of information, citizens in these
societies are unable to evolve and live as productive members of the
international community. In Afghanistan, this was evidenced by the
philosophy and practices of the now-defunct Taliban. Unfortunately, this
fanaticism has spread to the United States and evidenced by the rise of the
American Techniban.

The American Techniban are led by Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-SC) who
serves as the duly-appointed Congressional mouthpiece and elected puppet of
the entertainment industry cartels, having received nearly $300,000 in
campaign funding from Hollywood since 1997. Known in some circles as the
'Senator From Disney,' Hollings also bears a striking resemblance to a
younger Jack Valenti. (Valenti, for those unaware, is CEO of the movie
industry's lobby group and the founder of America's Techniban movement.)
Brainwashed by the Gospel of Valenti, the American Techniban's goal is
simple. Under the guise of 'preserving America's intellectual capital' and
supported by the funding of the entertainment industry cartels, they seek to
sustain the entertainment industry's Industrial Age business model (and
monopolies) in the modern Information Age - where such models are rendered
obsolete by emerging technology.

According to Techniban Leader Senator Hollings, the lack of 'ubiquitous
protections' has led to a 'lack of [high-quality] digital content on the
Internet - apparently he doesn't believe that consumers are interested in
any 'high-quality digital content' outside of what is produced by the major
entertainment industries. Forget the garage band in Miami or the two
teenagers producing an hour-long movie describing adolescent depression shot
with Dad's camcorder during Spring Break, or WashingtonPost.Com. Hollings'
interpretation of the Gospel of Valenti is that if a digital content didn't
come from an entity supporting the entertainment industry cartels it must
not be a worthwhile product. Unfortunately, many folks are of the belief
that since we don't require such 'security' measures for handguns (something
that can kill people) so why have such measures on electronic media which
educates and entertains them?

Last week, despite significant protest from the Internet populations and
on-the-record promises to delay any formal Senate action on the matter,
Hollings introduced the controversial and draconian legislative proposal
entitled the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act
(CBDTPA). This proposal is essentially a renamed version of Hollings'
original Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA) from early
2001. (bill summary and full text) It should also be noted that with the
exception of one executive from Intel, every person invited to testify on
the proposed CBDTPA was from the entertainment industry....there were no
artists, musicians, producers, or consumers invited. So much for this being
a 'consumer-friendly' bill.

Conspiracy theorists argue that the 'short name' for the bill was done to
confuse the public and other legislators...after all, it's difficult to
argue against something neither you nor your audience can pronounce.
Political analysts believe Hollings' introduction of CBDTPA was done in a
grumpy response to his counterparts in the US House recently passing the
Tauzin-Dingel bill on telecommunications industry reform, several portions
of which Hollings vehemently disagrees with.

Simply put, CBDTPA outlaws the sale or distribution of nearly any electronic
device and computer operating system unless it includes government-mandated
copy-prevention restrictions. Think of it as the federal government
mandating how, where, when, and for how long you can own or read a book at
the time you purchase it at Barnes and Noble or check it out of your local
library.

This is the latest episode in a two decade-old argument made by the
entertainment industry. From the early days of the VCR, to cassette tape
recorders, floppy disks, computers, and now the Internet, the Hollywood
moguls continually belief that emerging technology spells doom for their
profits and ability to deliver 'quality content' to the American public.
According to some reports, in 2001, videocassette rental and sales totaled
about $11 billion and exceeded box office receipts by over $2 billion.
Ironically, the VCR is the same device once referred to by Jack Valenti as
the 'Boston Strangler' that would decimate the film industry. Funny that
both he and the American film industry are still around and profiting beyond
the Dreams of Avarice.

Under the unpronounceable CBDTPA, anything that can record or store digital
information must be equipped with copy-prevention technology. Thus, under
CBDTPA, nearly all existing electronic devices such as personal computers,
mainframes, camcorders, servers, MP3 players, home stereos, VCRs, car
stereos, pocket calculators, wristwatches, cellular phones, microwave ovens,
CB radios, cameras, electronic thermostats, CD recorders, photocopiers, fax
machines, televisions, and rectal thermometers - would become illegal. Got a
computerized pacemaker? Better have it switched out for a
Techniban-compliant one and pray your HMO will cover the costs as
non-elective surgery.

One can only drool at the prospects of dealing with the black market in such
uncontrolled technologies...if it's a question of looking out for terrorists
and drug dealers or smugglers of unrestricted hard drives and MP3 players,
where do you think US Customs will focus its efforts? Will blank hard disks
become a prohibited import item like Cuban cigars?

The most striking aspect of CBDTPA (and its cousin, the still-controversial
Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998) is that both automatically outlaw
what might be done by someone, and not what actually is done. Both
initiatives presume the citizen guilty until proven guiltier, not in the
eyes of the court, but by the pre-emptive whims and desires of corporations
seeking to maintain control over consumers and their crumbling Industrial
Age business models. In essence, they pre-emptively criminalize what MIGHT
happen, as opposed to what DOES happen. (e.g., Knowing how to kill someone
is not by itself illegal; but committing murder is, and being proven to have
done so carries harsh penalties.)

Such a concept is not hard to belief. Reportedly, Microsoft is working with
Intel and AMD to create a new feature for future processors that will work
with Microsoft operating systems to enforce corporate copyright interests,
something partially-completed in Windows XP's Media Player. Should this be
completed, Microsoft would be in a position of considerable power - more
than today - over the majority of electronic content processed by electronic
devices and computers. It should be noted that Microsoft already holds a
patent on a computer operating system that incorporates the copy-prevention
technologies that the entertainment industry so desparately wants to inflict
on Information Age citizen-consumers. Securing their software? Looks like
the only thing Microsoft wants to secure are its corporate profits by
aligning with Hollywood.

According to some reports, America's domestic spending on computing
technology is over $600 billion a year, while Hollywood generates a measly
$35 billion to the national economy. CBDTPA would effectively compell a
huge, dynamic industry - comprised of large and small companies,
individuals, and academic researchers - to redefine itself simply to
preserve the obsolete business models of the American entertainment
industry.

Unfortunately for Americans and the people of the world embracing the
digital environment for any and all lawful purposes, the goals of the
American Techniban - brainwashed by the Gospel of Valenti - run contrary to
everything the Internet stands for. CBDTPA and the American Techniban
represent a fundamental threat to the future of modern information society;
their goals are to effect electronic martial law on all information
resources and implement draconian measures on today's information society
for no other reason than to satisfy the profiteering desires of the
entertainment moguls desperately trying to save their crumbling Industrial
Age business models.

It's high time that the entertainment companies learn that if they treat
their customers as criminals, they'll not only have fewer customers, but
many more criminals to contend with. How's that for economic growth?

Further Reading:

Forno - National Security and Digital Freedoms: How DMCA Threatens Both
(#2001-05 from July 2001)

Anti-DMCA.Org

EFF: Congress Calls For Public Participation on Digital Music Issues

MPAA 2001 US Economic Review (Adobe PDF) showing upward trends for revenue
across the board

DigitalConsumer.Org Online Petition - Stop CBDTPA


-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm only allowed so much time on-line per day. Gimme the cliff notes Scott.

I did. I posted a link.

You might want to point out in your letter (if it's true) that nobody you know has said that the reason they don't have broadband is because there's no content. Anyone I've talked to who wants broadband but doesn't have it would love to have it -- if it was available in their area and didn't cost an arm and a leg. (Of course, Tauzin-Dingell didn't help any ).

Bad news. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) is looking to introduce the CBDTPA in the House.

While this is evil, this is a rare case where he's serving (one of) his constituents -- Disney has its HQ in Burbank. Unfortunately, apparently for him, "The good of the one outweighs the good of the many" (With apologies to Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock).

Scott, man you should go to as mnay sites as you can with large groups of people to rally for your cause! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/meredithvieiraclub/ http://www.surveycentral.org and http://www.viewaskew.com/newboard would be good places to start. Also if you stumble onto a webring, start spreading your cause throughout every website you can.

The USA isn't the only country where the politicians are going completely crazy.

Here we have The implications of the UK Export Control Bill.

All your email belong to us!

Well, it looks like Sen. Leahy had an attack of good sense. He's killed the CBDTPA in committee, at least for this session.

Even though it's dead for now, you still need to write to your Senators and Representative and tell them to not even *THINK* about reintroducing this bill. Also write to Bush, and ask him to lobby against any such legislation, and to veto it if it passes.

Another link you might find interesting is public comments to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Copyright. Yours truly can be found about halfway down (do a search for "Neugroschl"). They are almost uniformly against such nonsense.

Apparently Congress does listen to people withoug briefcases full of money, upon rare occaisions.

The Canadian tech paper Globe Technology reports that nobody likes the CBDTPA. Surprise, surprise! Apparently every single comment made to the Judiciary Committee has been negative.

My favorite line from the story:

---

Quote:

"They seem satisfied to try to attack it in the press rather than trying to make it work," said Sen. Hollings spokesman Andy Davis.

---

This is slightly off-topic but a court decided that currently hacking is legal in Argentina because there aren't any laws against it. Translate this article.

Marker pens will be outlawed soon!

Hollywood is officially insane.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Sorry for yelling.

Oh, for those who don't understand why what Hollywood wants is so bad, consider...

If you use a digital camcorder, THIS AFFECTS YOU!

Examples:

Mommy and Daddy take little Johnny to the park and are videotaping him. Suddenly Johnny looks like he's going to take his first steps! Daddy aims the camcorder, and.... it shuts off just as Johnny takes that first step. Why? Because the group over by that tree turned on their boombox really loud, and it was playing the latest boyband stuff. The camcorder detected the watermark and shut off. Little Johnny's first steps are never recorded, but luckily, nobody pirated that song!

Or...

Jimmy and Cindy are at their wedding reception, about to have their first dance, and the camera shuts off, because the music is watermarked. But hey, an RIAA/MPAA member's profits are way more important than something silly like a once-in-a-lifetime event!

ScottN is NOT joking.

That's the saddest part of all.

Scott: Start a friggin' petition Scott! I'm a Petition Circulator I could give you a few pointers. Just eloquently and succienctily(sp? I'm having a bad grmamar day I can't seem to spell most words right) make your case against that MPAA idea, adn circulate petitions amongst the registered voters. Set up outside supermarkets and stuff, and practice your pitch.

I've already written to Bush re the CBDTPA (aka S.2048 or the SSSCA). I asked him to lobby against it, and veto it if passed. I used his own rhetoric (unwarranted government intrusion..., innovation not litigation, etc...).

I got back a response. It was the stock "pat on the head" letter. At least he's aware of the issues.

I gotta write to him again about this new thing. I'll write to my Senators, but they're as far into Disney's pocket as Hollings is (esp. Feinstein). My Rep. is kind of clueless about the matter... I'm trying to set up a face-to-face, but I want to have my ducks in a row.

Depends... the MPAA already has a precedent in Universal v. Remirides (spelling may be off). That's the 2600 DeCSS case.

This picture is then probably illegal under the DMCA: www.chip.de/artikelbilder/1854210_5e1900a4ef.jpg

Considering the fact that nearly all computer mags here in Germany come with very detailed instructions on copying/ripping CDs and DVDs and disabling "copy protection" schemes I wonder when the first MPAA/RIAA lawyer tries to sue their US representatives..

Soon we'll OWN every THOUGHT in your head, web-boys! MUHAHAHA!

Sony Music Lobbies for Ban on Markers

And now, something that we only dream about.

Bon Appetite!

Bill Gates of Borg strikes again! Now he wants to install spy software in every computer and if you have installed the latest update for the M$ Mediaplayer it's already there.

Watch out for Palladium!

Apparently, even if you don't play any sound, you can be sued for copyright infringement.

Scott: Please tell me that was a joke! If not I'm going to Canada, •••• this country full of inbred dim bulbs!

Have fun moving.

I wonder if the "average person" knows that what they are doing is the electronic equivalent of putting a person in his or her home to monitor what he or she is doing and ensure that he or she does not commit a crime

Yep, that's a good point, I hadn't thought of that. CBDTPA (formerly known as the SSSCA) would probably violate the 1st, 3rd, and 4th Amendments, and probably more.

The instance you give, Positron, would be the Third Amendment violation.

Rep. Howard Berman (D-Los Angeles) wants to give the RIAA the right to hack P2P services.

The instance you give, Positron, would be the Third Amendment violation.

How? It's not quartering military troops in a private home. It's a pretty clear *Fourth* Amendment violation, given that it's equivalent to a perpetual search for no good reasons.

Of course, there is *no* case law to explain or expand upon the Third Amendment, so we could debate this until the CBDTPA passes and not get anywhere. (Am I the only one who thinks that SSSCA is easier to remember?)

Yeah, but the "Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act" is so much fuzzier sounding than the "Security Systems Standards and Certification Act".

I mean, who could be against promoting Consumer Broadband and Digital Television?

The problem is of course, is that the CBDTPA promotes neither. As I said in my comments to the Senate (and was quoted in a PCWorld article), I've never heard anyone say, "I'd get broadband if only there were high quality Hollywood content available!"

Scott, as a Democrat myself it greatly saddens me that Berman would want to try such a thing. He can sugarcoat it all he wants to but it's really just a smokescreen. Maybe he's been bought by the RIAA, but then that's not unusual with politicians anymore.

I make no apologies for my party or in this case, Berman. That's for him to do, but I doubt he will.

They're at it again. Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) has revised the "Anticounterfeiting Amendments of 2002" bill to include DRM. The original intent of the bill was to update anti-counterfeiting law, which applied to things such as holograms, etc... Now they've added the usual Hollywood wishlist. It's $25000 PER INCIDENT. The bill has some rather interesting ramifications...

From the ZDNet story on the bill:

---

Quote:

Biden's new bill would make it a federal felony to try and trick certain types of devices into playing your music or running your computer program. Breaking this law--even if it's to share music by your own garage band--could land you in prison for up to five years. And that's not counting the civil penalties of up to $25,000 per offense.

---

From the "What Do You Mean, Hackers Can Hold Copyrights Too?" Dept:
Apparently, in a preemptive bit of "sauce for the goose", the RIAA has been DoS'ed.

For those who don't know, DoS refers to a "Denial of Service" attack. For those who further don't know, the RIAA and MPAA have been lobbying for legislation (sponsored by Howard Berman, see my post of Tuesday, July 02, 2002 - 09:16 am) that would allow them to hack P2P networks with just such an attack. Perhaps the DoS'ers had copyrights on DoS software, and were preventing the RIAA from using them?

The Fine Print:
Disclaimer: DoS'ing anyone (even someone who richly deserves it) is illegal, and I do not condone the actions of the person or persons responsible for this act. I do, however find it to be ironically amusing.

"The use of violence in self-defense is a sign of intelligence." -- Malcolm X

(I may have details of the quote wrong.)
disclaimer: It may be illegal. It may be wrong. It may be a tad early. (unless it is a shot across the bow). If you want to throw stones at somebody's glass house don't complain if you end up homeless too.

Yeah, I'll post with a pseudonym because I'd perfer not to be hacked by the RIAA.

That's ok, Susy. I won't reveal that you're really Bill Gates.

Oops! Silly me!

Here's some more on Berman's efforts from Cyberista.

I would just like to say that all of my posts here, including, but not limited to, "Monday, July 29, 2002 - 10:16 am" are Copyright (c) by me.

Should the Berman bill pass, I reserve the right to hack into any RIAA and MPAA computer to search for unauthorized copies.

Gee, thanks, Blue! And here I thought that us LP'ers were for getting the gov't out of our lives!

Something semi-related:

Idea in Former Employee's Head Belongs to Alcatel

Berry, I dumped your post because it was very inappropriate. Please don't post anymore such messages again.

A history of the Battle on the Hill between Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

A good read, IMHO.

Copyright trouble:
http://allen.senate.gov/PressOffice/09052002.htm

Actually, Electron, the withdrawal of support by Allen, as reported in that press release, is a Good Thing™.

That's what I meant. My heading was bad.

Something to laugh about (or better not): Fritz's Hit List

Something certainly not to laugh about: TCPA/Palladium Frequently Asked Questions

What a wonderful digital world...

Electron, you either subscribe to Politech or read Slashdot, don't you?

ScottN, no, I just visit very often a German news site with a newsticker and an online magazine. Quite interesting stuff there and they can do something similar like "slashdotting".

Blue Berry, that's a wise decision. Better an exploding penguin on your monitor than the Gates of Hell. Oh, and I hope the RIAA doens't read the Onion in search of new ideas...

The judge in the RIAA v. Verizon case has said that the DMCA is "unclear".

Note that that was a comment from the bench, and not an official ruling.

Today, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Eldred v. Ashcroft.

Reports are mixed.

For those who don't know, Eldred v. Ashcroft is the challenge to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.

There's a nice article concerning security issues coming in conflict with the DMCA: If I tell you that I'll have to kill you: Red Hat fights the DMCA

"Got that? In some instances at least, the very act of explaining what has been fixed by a security patch could be construed as explaining how the security of a product could be breached, and hence could be viewed as a breach of the DMCA."

"Does this mean that all of the companies issuing security advisories are breaching the DMCA? Well, quite possibly."

Well, the point is that the Linux security model could be used to "effectively protect a copyrighted work", and therefore releasing the patch, which implicitly provides information about the flaw in security, could be considered disseminating information as to how to circumvent that "protection", and hence be considered illegal under the DMCA.

After what happened to Dmitri Sklyarov, Alan Cox, who is one of the premier Linux Kernel Hackers has stated he will not set foot in the US until the DMCA is repealed.

Apparently, some e-greeting cards are little more than viruses with spyware: but they are legal because they explain that they do it in the fine print:

Security Alert: E-Mail Greeting Cards Could Carry Malicious Code (Link)

What's in a greeting card? If it's an e-mail card, there may be a whole lot more to it than you thought.

According to an advisory posted at the Web site of security firm Sophos, "Technical support has received a significant number of calls from customers concerned about a widespread e-mail which invites users to pick up an 'E-Card' from a Web site called either FriendGreetings.com or Cool-Downloads.com." The advisory says that if users click on the link in the e-mail, they are invited to install an application onto their computers which includes a license agreement "to send a similar greeting card to all addresses found in the user's Outlook address book."

In a separate advisory to PC Magazine, Grey McKenzie, founder of software firm SpyCop, says that "a new hybrid form of spy software has been released called Email PI. This nasty new spy software allows 'remote installation' by e-mail, via an e-card greeting card." Email PI is a commercial product. A FAQ from Email PI's Web site says such greeting card schemes are above-ground strategies: "Email PI can be sent to any e-mail address in the form of a greeting card in order to spy on anyone."

And another reason why the DMCA is wrong.

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=18&threadid=126042

Several big retailers gave fatwallet.com Cease and Desist letters under the DMCA because fatwallet got their hands on info of their "Black Friday" (day after ThxGiving) sale rices and posted them online.

If fatwallet had printed on dead trees (paper), there would have been no case at all, but because it was digital, they had to take down the info.

Boycott Wal*Mart, Target, Best Buy, and Staples on Black Friday (and the whole season if you can). Write to their corporate headquarters and tell them *WHY* you are not shopping there this year.

Scott: I hope you read this before this gets deleted.

I will DEFINATELY be joining you on this boycott, after I pick up Law & Order Season 1 DVD (I'm sorry Scott, but it's the only store in Colorado that isn't charging $70.00 or more for it). Well, i suppose I could wait till after Christmas. Perhaps as a birthday present to myself (I have no real friends anyway so I might as well get me something).

Viva La Nerds!

Scott, I'm not gonna protest Target on Black Friday because, well, I work there. However, I do protest how they treat us at my particular one.

Screw that!

BOYCOTT WAL-MART, PERIOD!!!!!!!!

On the third page, Gracie provides several links. I BEG you to read them!!

And all three of those links appeared to have the exact same stories and information on them as they are all run by the UFCW union. Unions cause more harm than they do benefit. I have neither worked for a Walmart or a union. However many members of my family have done so for both and the ones that work for Wal-Mart say it depends on the individual store and manager as to the working conditions. My other cousin who works for ford motor company has had nothing but trouble from his union. He has been shorted of checks, cheated out of vacation time and been passed over for promotion by people with less seniority. He has filed grievences with the union to see them ignored. He is considering leaving ford and going to work for Toyota a move I heartily applaud. Not only will he be with a better company but he will be helping to build better cars. (Slight joke on Fords)The large unions have outlived their usefulness and now do not appear to care for their mission as much as their dues. The company I work for in the section I work for is not unionized and our open door policy is quite nice and effective. If a company truely cares about their employees then this policy is much more effective and productive than the hatemongering generated by unionization in which a company is broken down into "us" and "them" while the union reps take their dues and kickbacks. I realize comparing the professional world with Wal-Mart is quite like comparing apples with sledgehammers but it is the area I know best. The local Wal-Mart I go to is always clean, well stocked and neatly organized. The employees appear to be friendly and cheerful. I am greated very warmly by the nice older gentleman at the door who makes eye contact and asks us if we need a cart, and the one cashier that is usually there when my wife and I go grocery shopping (It is one of the "super Walmarts" in our area) has learned our name and talks to us very nicely and friendly. As for the black friday event and the boycotts people are calling for. That just will not work. Too many people are either unconcerned about the issues of union/non-union or they will compare the various ads and shop for what is the perceived lowest price. My wife has worked as a mystery shopper for a time and we have also shopped in Target, Wal-mart and K-Mart and each of the stores has their own feel to them slightly but for the most part are directly interchangeable. However the local Krogers (which is union) has had several of their employees (to the point where they are now hiring) desert them for the new Wal-Mart that was recently opened (about August) across the street. I find this very interesting. I apologize for going off thread like this but I found it something I had to say.

Nice commentary in NRO.

Great article.

It's kind of strange to see something on *that* particular site that could easily have appeared on the World Socialist Website.

Lolar: Well, you're HALF right. Today's Union LEADERS, most of whom are secretly handpicked by the Coporations, do more harm than good. The Unions have fallen from grace, and so far we as Wrokers have done little to fix the situation. We just sit back and let these tools who lied to us to get elected to Union ledership constantly give in. Go read Michael Moore's Downsize This. He devotes an entire chapter to this topic, called "Why Are Union Leaders So F@$!ing Stup!d?"

"Why Are Union Leaders So F@$!ing Stup!d?"

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

My apologies. Yes. I should have said the leaders of the unions, who are more times than not working hand in hand with coporate leadership, are to blame. Not the gneral rank and file.

Blue, Here you go.

And yes, we are WAY OT on DMCA.

Anybody besides Josh read the link? Blue, you should definitely read it.

Googled on +"Wal Mart" +"made in america" -"sam walton"

(The last was to kill Walton bios). Oh, and a google search for +"Wal Mart" +"made in america", adding a site request for either cnn.com or msnbc.com came up with zilch.

Pointed to by Felton on the hit list...

Big Brother, Take My Sister (Free Registration Required).

Hey Scott, did you hear this nonsense about KaZaa Users being sent BILLS by the RIAA? Is this even legal, for them to charge us money? My Dad has already canceleld his acount in a panic. I don't have any music files on my PC right now (I burn them to CD-Rs as soon as I get enough to fill the 79 minutes), but could they possibly charge me for the RATM music videos I downloaded?

Yep, but only in Denmark, so far.

I have some 500 MP3s and 150 MPEGs on my computer, totalling some 7GB, and I've yet to see anything in the mail from the RIAA or the MPAA.

Of course, it's pretty easy to "destroy the evidence" by deleting everything... or putting it on CDRs.

CDRs can be confiscated.

True.

Dude, you mean you're the RIAA! The MPAA would make us talk about our DivX;-)s

Got your SmartCard™ in order to watch Digital TV?

Note how one of the even one of the electronics guys comments that Hollywood wants to go way past just "copy protection" (I prefer to call it user control), into trying to protect their business model instead (geographic regioning of "smartcards").

Hey Scott, do you have any pamphlets or books on this subject I could give out to my friends? I mean, geting my Mom on your side was easier than finding snow in Vail, but I'd like to take a crack at getting my Dad and my Pizza Hut co-workers on board. Granted I doubt I'll get all of them (Dreaux seems to think Bill Clinton knew about 9/11 thre years in advance), but if I had soemthing other than my shotty memory and occasional stuter to go on...

On which subject? SmartCards in DTV? Or the DMCA and the CBDTPA?

No, I don't have any pamphlets, but the web is your friend. Look particularly at the EFF, Politech, Wired, and Professor Ed Felten's website.

Ed Felten is a respected professor at Princeton. He was threatened by the RIAA with prosecution if he presented a paper on SDMI at a security conference (SDMI is the "Secure Digital Music Initiative). He filed a suit against the RIAA, who promptly backed off, claiming "we never threatened him!" He was also one of the DoJ's witnesses in the MS trial.

Also good is Professor David Touretzky's page. Touretzky has created, among other things, a Gallery of CSS Descramblers.

Web searches can help. Look for "Jon Johansen", "DVD Jon", "Sklyarov", "Dmitri" or "Dmitry" (in conjunction with Sklyarov). Searches for "DMCA", or "CBDTPA" also work.

Also of interested is Eldred v. Ashcroft, an attempt to repeal the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.

Also, Electron, I, and others have posted links here and over on the RIAA board in the Music Catch-Basin. Follow them!


Good Hunting!

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-978176.html,ElcomSoft Not Guilty of DMCA violations. This is the Sklyarov case.

In one sense this is very good, as Dmitry and Elcomsoft did nothing wrong. In fact, it could be argued that their product brought the Adobe Ebook Reader into compliance with Russian law.

On the other hand (and there's always an other hand), if Elcomsoft had been found guilty (Dmitry had been dropped from the case as a defendant), it would have led to a venue where the DMCA could have been overturned. But that's selfishness on my part. Congratulations to Elcomsoft.

With 54 Mixed CDs, two homemade 'soundtracks' for NitCentral's cybersoaps, and a couple of CDs made for friends I probably already AM their poster boy.

'DVD Jon' scores huge legal victory

"A Norwegian teenager who helped crack a code meant to protect the content of DVDs won full backing from an Oslo court on Tuesday. The court acquitted him on all charges, a ruling that comes as a crushing blow to public prosecutors and entertainment giants."

Frell you, CSS!

SCOTUS just upheld the CTEA in Eldred v. Ashcroft.

••••.

That censored comment was... cr@p. Oh, and for those who wondered what the big deal is... nothing, and I mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ever produced in the US after 1923 will EVER fall into the public domain.

20 years from now, Disney will buy off some more Congresscritters and get copyright extended again. So much for "securing for limited Times".

And in the latest DMCA idiocy, Universal Garage Door Remotes violate the DMCA!

This may be a Good Thing™. Everybody and their brother has and can use a garage door opener...

Well, Scott, my brother may have one cuz he's got a garage but I don't have a garage since I live in an apartment. Heck, I don't even have a carport!

This one here is not a DMCA case, but a clear abuse of patent.

Background. A year or two ago, British Telecom (BT) found a patent that they claimed gave them ownership of the very concept of a hyperlink. The first person/corp that they sued was Prodigy. This was not a particularly bright idea, since Prodigy is owned by Southwest Bell (SBC), and SBC has fairly deep pockets.

Apparently, SBC learned a thing or two from BT. First, find stoopid overbroad patents and sue. Second, don't start with a deep pocket defendant, but some small site.

SBC claims to own a patent that's essentally web frames, or any web site that uses a static display at the top for navigation. They are suing a site called MuseumTours, a seller of educational toys.

Now... I don't see where they have a leg to stand on. Frames were implemented in Netscape Navigator 2, which came out in '95. The patent was filed in '96 and awarded in '99. There has to be prior art. Unfortunately, the Wayback Machine only goes back to '96 or '97, so it's not that easy to find.

Hey, you--the unindicted Federal felon!

On the bright side of things, Rep. Rick Boucher Introduced the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act of 2003 (aka DMCRA).

Co-sponsors:
Rep Andrews, Robert E.
Rep Bachus, Spencer
Rep Barton, Joe
Rep Doolittle, John T.

Rep Kennedy, Patrick was also a cosponsor, but withdrew sponsorship on 28 Jan.

Here's a new article on another blow to the RIAA.

Great article, MarkN. I remember a bit of a hubbub over DAT's when they first came out, just before the CD revolution. Gee, DAT's didn't kill the music industry, just as VCR's didn't kill the movie industry. I don't think CD-R's are really going to kill the music industry, either. Having to pay nearly $20 for an hour (or less) of music on a commercial CD is going to kill the music industry. (For the record, I almost exclusively buy used (pre-owned) commercial CD's for around $7, if I buy them at all. Actualy, I'm getting rid of a bunch of my CD's, as I don't listen to them anymore and haven't enough storage room.)

Thanks, CR. I got it off the Adrenaline Vault forums and thought it fit here, what with all the other articles are the RIAA that've been linked here, too.

Use a Firewall, Go to Jail

The only good thing is that Windows will be VERBOTEN too. K

Found an old post of mine, pointing out the absurdity of retroactive copyright extensions...

P2P Killed Elvis.

And in their latest bit of brilliance, the RIAA is suing a student for $97.8 Billion US. The article says $97.8 Trillion, but they messed up on the math.

Once more the DMCA stifles academic speech:

DMCA threats gag security researchers.

File-swap software to foil enforcers

Apparently, the RIAA has absolutely no scruples whatsoever about who they'll go after next.